Evening Edition

BIN JAWAD, Libya (AFP) – Libyan rebels’ push westwards towards Tripoli gathered momentum on Sunday amid promises the uprising would not further hamper oil production in the areas under their control.

The rebels’ pursuit of Moamer Kadhafi’s forces saw them wrest back control of key oil town Ras Lanuf and press on as far as Nofilia with Kadhafi’s hometown of Sirte firmly in their sights 100 kilometres (60 miles) further along the road where the next major battle was expected.

Operator of quake-hit nuclear plant says reading that radioactivity was 10 million times more than normal was an error

The operator of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi quake-crippled nuclear complex has said a spike reported in radioactivity at the plant is a mistake.

Jiji Press quoted the Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) as saying on Sunday that the mistake – which indicated radiation levels 10 million times higher than normal – was due to confusion between readings of iodine and cobalt in the water.

The inaccurate reading had forced emergency workers to flee from the complex’s Unit 2 reactor.

“The number is not credible,” said TEPCO’s spokesman, Takashi Kurita. “We are very sorry.”

He said officials were taking another sample to get accurate levels, but did not know when the results would be announced.

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TOKYO – Mounting problems, including badly miscalculated radiation figures and inadequate storage tanks for huge amounts of contaminated water, stymied emergency workers Sunday as they struggled to nudge Japan’s stricken nuclear complex back from the edge of disaster.

Workers are attempting to remove the radioactive water from the tsunami-ravaged nuclear compound and restart the regular cooling systems for the dangerously hot fuel.

The day began with company officials reporting that radiation in leaking water in the Unit 2 reactor was 10 million times above normal, a spike that forced employees to flee the unit. The day ended with officials saying the huge figure had been miscalculated and offering apologies.

WASHINGTON – In a sign of U.S. confidence that the weeklong assault on Libya has tamed Moammar Gadhafi’s air defenses, the Pentagon has reduced the amount of naval firepower arrayed against him, officials said Sunday.

The move, not yet publicly announced, reinforces the White House message of a diminishing U.S. role – a central point in President Barack Obama’s national address Monday night on Libya. The White House booked Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on three Sunday news shows to promote the administration’s case ahead of the speech.

LATAKIA, Syria – Syria’s army was out in force Sunday in a port city scarred by unrest aimed at symbols of the government, which is struggling to put down an unprecedented nationwide outbreak of protest and dissent.

President Bashar Assad’s regime has responded by both fatally shooting protesters, and promising reform, and a lawmaker told The Associated Press on Sunday that he expected Assad to soon announce that he was lifting a nearly 50-year state of emergency. The timing remained unclear.

Bin Jawad is the latest town to fall as Libyan rebels’ rapid advance west takes them closer to Gaddafi-held Sirte.

Libyan rebels are moving westwards towards a possible showdown with government forces loyal to the country’s embattled leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

Opposition forces backed by coalition air strikes have already seized control of the key towns of Ras Lanuf, Uqayla, Brega and Ajdabiya in a rapid advance along the coastline.

By Sunday afternoon, the rebel advance had reached the town of Bin Jawad, Al Jazeera’s James Bays reported from the outskirts of the city.

Our correspondent said Gaddafi’s forces appeared to have withdrawn eastwards. Those still in the town surrendered without a fight, Bays said.

Revolutionary forces move more west along Libya’s coastal road, seizing several towns without resistance, as they get closer to Sirte

Libyan rebels are advancing on Muammar Gaddafi’s home town, Sirte, after retaking all the ground lost in earlier fighting as government forces broke and fled under western air strikes.

Revolutionary forces rapidly moved more than 150 miles west along Libya’s coastal road, seizing several towns without resistance, as the first witness accounts emerged of the devastating effect on Gaddafi’s army and militia of the aerial bombardment that broke their resistance at Ajdabiya on Saturday.

DAMASCUS (AFP) – Syrian authorities have decided to lift emergency rule, a presidential adviser told AFP on Sunday as residents of the northern city of Latakia buried victims of a wave of unrest that has put President Bashar al-Assad under unprecedented pressure.

Troops have deployed in Latakia, a religiously diverse port city 350 kilometres (220 miles) northwest of Damascus, where at least 12 people have been killed by gunfire involving snipers since Friday.

SANAA (AFP) – President Ali Abdullah Saleh has warned of Somalia-like “chaos” in Yemen if he steps down without an agreed successor as Washington said on Sunday his fall could endanger its fight against Al-Qaeda.

Highlighting the multiple challenges facing any ruler of Yemen, suspected Al-Qaeda militants seized control of Jaar, a town in the restive southern province of Abyan, security officials told AFP.

ABIDJAN (AFP) – Hopes for a negotiated solution to Ivory Coast’s bloody post-election crisis took a knock Sunday as rival claimants to the presidency failed to agree on the African Union’s choice of mediator.

Alassane Ouattara, internationally recognised as the winner of November presidential elections, rejected Cape Verde ex-foreign minister Jose Brito, pointing to his close ties to Ivorian strongman Laurent Gbagbo.

(Reuters) – Militants clashed with the Yemeni army in a southern town on Sunday, fuelling Western fears that the country could descend into chaos which would benefit al Qaeda if President Ali Abdullah Saleh is forced out.

The army tried to dislodge a coalition of Islamists from Jaar in Abyan province after they seized buildings on Saturday and security forces appeared to have deserted the town of several hundred thousand.

(Reuters) – The United States will cut its military role in the Libya no-fly zone in the next week or so and with other nations start to focus on how to ease Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi from power, top U.S. officials said on Sunday.

In television interviews, the U.S. secretaries of state and defense raised the possibility that Gaddafi’s regime could splinter and said a London conference on Tuesday would discuss political strategies to end his 41-year rule of the oil-exporting North African nation.

(Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad, facing the gravest crisis in his 11-year rule, deployed the army for the first time in Syria’s main port of Latakia after nearly two weeks of protests spread across the country.

Assad, 45, who has made no direct public comment since protests started sweeping Syria, was expected to address the nation shortly, officials said, without giving further details.

(Reuters) – Elizabeth Warren, the Obama administration’s defender of financial consumers, will venture into the corporate lion’s den this week, along with Jamie Dimon, CEO of banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The two will be speakers at an event set for Wednesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business lobbying group, in its Corinthian-columned headquarters situated within view of the White House.

(Reuters) – Ireland’s government wants to impose losses on some senior bondholders in Irish lenders to reduce the burden on taxpayers from a prolonged banking crisis, a senior minister said on Sunday.

Dublin wants to impose losses on banks’ senior unsecured bonds not covered by a state guarantee, which currently amount to over 16 billion euros, as part of a new deal with the European Union, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

(Reuters) – It would make sense for Portugal to seek aid from the European Union bailout fund, although such a decision will be caught up in domestic politics, European Central Bank Governing Board member Ewald Nowotny said.

Portugal’s Premier Jose Socrates submitted his resignation last week after parliament rejected austerity measures proposed by his minority Socialist government to try to avert a bailout.

(Reuters) – Taliban insurgents abducted around 50 off-duty Afghan policemen in an ambush in a volatile province in northeastern Afghanistan, the militant group and provincial officials said on Sunday.

Taliban-led militants have stepped up their fight this year against the Afghan government and its Western backers at a time when Kabul has announced security responsibilities for seven areas will be handed to Afghan forces in July.

(Reuters) – Bahrain’s largest Shi’ite opposition group Wefaq has accepted Kuwait as a mediator with Bahrain’s government to end a political crisis gripping the tiny kingdom, a member of Wefaq said on Sunday.

Bahrain imposed martial law and called in troops from neighboring Sunni-ruled states earlier this month to quell weeks of unrest by mostly Shi’ite protesters.

(Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives appeared set to lose power in a major regional stronghold on Sunday after early results suggested the anti-nuclear Greens were surging to their first ever state premiership.

In Baden-Wuerttemberg state, where anti-nuclear sentiment has been mobilized by Japan’s nuclear crisis, the Greens and Social Democrats (SPD) were set to win 48.3 percent, eclipsing the Christian Democrats who have held power for six decades.

(Reuters) – The French voted on Sunday in a second round of local elections that have caused alarm and disarray in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party after the far-right National Front surged in first-round voting.

The polls served to gauge the national mood a year before a presidential election and will determine whether the anti-immigrant National Front gains a foothold in a handful of local councils — levers of grassroots political power.

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. – If there’s any place where tea partiers in Congress might hesitate to call for cuts in Social Security and Medicare to shrink the federal debt, Florida’s retirement havens should top the list.

Even here, however, Republican lawmakers are racing toward a spending showdown with Democrats exhibiting little nervousness about deep cuts, including those that eventually would hit benefit programs long left alone by politicians.

WASHINGTON – Millions of retired and disabled people in the United States had better brace for another year with no increase in Social Security payments.

The government is projecting a slight cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security benefits next year, the first increase since 2009. But for most beneficiaries, rising Medicare premiums threaten to wipe out any increase in payments, leaving them without a raise for a third straight year.

PHILADELPHIA – Maya Moore had 23 points and 14 rebounds to help Connecticut rally from a seven-point second half deficit and beat Georgetown 68-63 on Sunday in the regional semifinals.

Bria Hartley added 17 points for UConn (35-1), which is now three victories away from a third straight national championship that would match the school’s own run from 2002-04 and Tennessee’s from 1996-98.

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Jim Calhoun could scarcely watch when the most improbable postseason run of his coaching life at Connecticut came down to an open 3-point attempt by Arizona’s Jamelle Horne.

The shot clanged off the back rim. The clock hit zeros.

Nine victories in just 19 days. Calhoun has seen just about everything, but nothing like this – and now his Huskies will keep running all the way to Houston.

NEW ORLEANS – Of course Butler erased a late deficit. Of course the Bulldogs hit a clutch 3-pointer late in overtime. Of course they’re going back to the Final Four.

This is the Butler Way.

Shelvin Mack scored 27 points, including five in overtime, and Butler reached the Final Four for the second year in a row with a 74-71 victory over Florida on Saturday.

DAYTON, Ohio – No overtime this time. Notre Dame’s defense needed less than a half to end the drama.

Brittany Mallory scored season-high 20 points Saturday, and Notre Dame’s defensive pressure took its toll in a 78-53 win over Oklahoma that sent the second-seeded Fighting Irish to the regional final.

Notre Dame (29-7) will play top-seeded Tennessee on Monday. The Lady Vols (34-2) pulled away from Ohio State in the second half for an 85-75 win – their 25th straight – in the other semifinal.

SPOKANE, Wash. – When Stanford needed its sister act the most, Chiney and Nnemkadi Ogwumike came through with exactly what the Cardinal needed.

Nnemkadi Ogwumike and her freshman sister, Chiney, scored 12 of Stanford’s final 15 points and the top-seeded Cardinal held on in the final minute for a 72-65 win over No. 5 seed North Carolina on Saturday night in the Spokane Regional semifinals.

DAYTON, Ohio – There are halftime chats and then there are coach’s rants. Pat Summitt hasn’t won 1,071 games by not knowing when to let her team have it.

Summitt absolutely lit up her Tennessee Lady Vols at the break and their regional semifinal game Saturday tilted soon after. With Shekinna Stricklen scoring 14 of her 20 points in the second half and touching off a critical 11-3 second-half run, Summitt and the Lady Vols moved into their accustomed spot in the Elite Eight with an 85-75 win over Ohio State.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Two-time defending series champion Dario Franchitti won IndyCar’s season opener on Sunday, showing he’s once again the one to beat in open-wheel racing.

Franchitti grabbed the lead early on and was hardly challenged in the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. The Scottish driver was nearly perfect for 100 laps on the scenic, 1.8-mile street course, beating pole-sitter Will Power to the finish line by more than seven seconds.

MELBOURNE, Australia – Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel opened his Formula One title defense by driving a flawless race and beating McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton to win the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on Sunday.

Starting from the pole, Vettel maintained his lead after the first turn and had already opened a gap of more than 2 seconds over Hamilton following the first lap and the German’s lead was never seriously threatened.